I just think sometimes we jump too easily to “human choice” and “evil exists” as explanations for why bad things happen without fully considering the implications of what such a belief means about God and the world we live in.
It’s certainly not very comforting or helpful to tell the person who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer that this is really a “gift from God.” It’s not helpful to tell the person who has just lost a child in an automobile accident that “this was really God’s will... God has a plan.” Truth is, God weeps and aches for the pain and brokenness we experience and God weeps over the pain we inflict on others. And yet if human choice or random evil is the only explanation we have for why bad things happen, then what we are really saying is that we live in a universe that is in large part out of God’s control.
It’s one sort of problem to wonder what kind of a God might cause such awful things as murder, hurricanes, and cancer. But the alternative is a God who sits on his hands and just lets random stuff happen – a clockmaker God who winds up the machine and lets the world spin out of control and only occasionally intervenes. True, we don't believe God is passive all the time. We think that God is in charge lots of the time, or at least some of the time. But is it really any better to have a God who lapses in and out of involvement in the world?
I think the problem is that we believe God is far more impotent than God really is. We’d rather take the world on our own and deal with our “own” problems and just consult God when we get in a pinch. It cramps our style to bow to a God of the universe who is completely sovereign, wholly loving, and ultimately beyond human understanding.
